Overview of the publishing process

The publishing process is a series of steps through which you create, review, publish, and archive content. This section describes various publishing workflows, as well as the different steps in the publishing process.

Publishing workflows

Every electronic publishing or media company that uses Brightspot has its own workflow for publishing content—often using different workflows for different types of content. In a simple workflow, an editor creates and then immediately publishes an asset. After some time, the editor archives the asset. A simple workflow may be appropriate for very small media companies that don’t have dedicated reviewers, or for low-impact assets such as tags.

In a complex workflow, an editor creates an asset and sends it for review—possibly for more than one iteration. When the review is complete, Brightspot checks if the asset is scheduled for immediate or future publication, and publishes the asset accordingly. After some time, an editor archives the asset, and updates all other content that refers to the archived asset. The following diagram is an example of a complex workflow.

A complex workflow may be appropriate for high-volume media companies with large readership, or when publishing high-profile content that requires extra measures of quality control.

Brightspot supports the above simple and complex workflows, as well as most other workflows for electronic publishing. For information about designing a workflow for your organization, see Workflows.

Adding or updating content

You can create or upload almost any type of digital content, such as articles, blog posts, images, videos, or files. You create and review content in the content edit page. One aspect of creating content is leveraging other content already in Brightspot. For example, if you have a rich library of science-related images, you can write a story about astronomy and include an image of Saturn that someone else previously added to Brightspot.

You add or update content in the content edit form. A form typically consists of several fields, and can vary depending on the asset type. The following example shows only two of the fields for an article: headline and body.

The following table lists the basic field types available in a content edit form. Your version of Brightspot may not have all of these field types, or may have other types that are extensions of these basic types.

See Creating content for more information.

Reviewing content

You can configure Brightspot to accommodate almost any reviewing workflow, such as the following scenarios:

• An editor creates an asset, and then revises the asset the next day.
  
• A reviewer opens an editor’s original asset, makes changes as necessary, and immediately publishes it.
  
• A reviewer opens an editor’s original asset, recommends updates, and returns the asset to the editor.

Brightspot’s reviewing workflows incorporate messaging (email, text, browser notifications) and conversation, so editors and reviewers can collaborate seamlessly using their favorite platforms.

Regardless of your review workflow, every time you save an asset, publish an asset, archive an asset, or change an asset's status as part of a workflow, Brightspot saves the asset as a version. You can retrieve an asset's current or previous version, modify it, and publish it; for details, see Revisions.

See Managing content for more information.

Publishing content

When you publish an asset, Brightspot first applies layout and formatting based on various configuration settings. (What you see in the content edit form has little to do with how your asset actually appears in a web browser.) Blog posts may have advertisements to the left and right of the body text, while videos may have advertisements above and below.

Next, Brightspot pushes the formatted asset to the public Internet. Depending on your site’s business model, the content can be limited to subscribers, or it can be available to any visitor.

See Publishing an asset for more information.

Archiving content

Nothing lasts forever, particularly in the digital world. Depending on your company’s policies, you can archive assets so they are no longer accessible to visitors but remain in Brightspot. You can restore archived assets or delete them permanently from Brightspot. (You can also customize Brightspot to automatically archive content.) Before archiving an asset, you can check where it is referenced by other assets and modify the links accordingly.

See Archiving and deleting for more information.

This section details all of the facets of publishing content in Brightspot.